you are dust (to dust you shall return)
by michellejjones
Summary: Tired, Caitlin leans back and collapses against the wall until she's sitting on the floor, back against the cold plaster, knees hugging her chest. "Barry," She finally says, voice tired and small. "I have a month to live." And, oh, he doesn't think anything's ever hurt him as much as those words. [Snowbarry Week 16. Day 3: Apocalypse. Oneshot.]


**Snowbarry Week 2016, Day 3! The theme today is "Apocalypse." Hope y'all enjoy.**

 **Title:** **you are dust (to dust you shall return).**

 **Summary:** **Tired, Caitlin leans back and collapses against the wall until she's sitting on the floor, back against the cold plaster, knees hugging her chest. "Barry," She finally says, voice tired and small. "I have a month to live." And, oh, he doesn't think anything's ever hurt him as much as those words. [Snowbarry Week 16. Day 3: Apocalypse. Oneshot.]**

 **Disclaimer:** **I do not own _The Flash,_ or any other charcaters mentioned in this work.**

* * *

 **you are dust (to dust you shall return).**

 **by clarabella wandering.**

* * *

The world went to shit, and it went to shit fast.

It starts with a teeny tiny, not important outbreak in Metropolis, one that's handled seamlessly. Then comes a bigger one, one that makes national news, but is still handled. Everyone contaminated is put in quarantine, and Mercury Labs sends some scientists to research on this new disease. It was then that all hell broke loose, that Metropolis fell into disaster. Not one soul was left who hadn't been contaminated. He always says that maybe if there had been some sort of hero there, things could have been better. But there wasn't, and so, people died.

People are still dying.

He remembers what it felt to be able to roam freely, to know what was going on in the world -where each villain was, what the weather would be like that morning- but the memory is vague and fleeting. Now, instead, he runs carefully, because even the air he breathes could be a poison. "This isn't life," his friend -Ronnie Raymond- had said before the Illness had taken him. "This isn't living."

"Overwatch to Flash, do you copy?" The voice cuts through his reverie, bringing him back to the task at hand.

"I'm not the Flash anymore, Felicity." He returns, as he runs up to HQ and awaits for the opening of the gates. He could just run over; In the earlier days, that's indeed what he'd do; But the newer guards need to grow accustomed to opening and closing the bulky beams, so he waits. "I'm Barry. I'm just Barry."

Another voice crackles over the speakers, this one faint and a little tired. "You're the Flash, Barry. You're a superhero and you're the Flash."

This voice pains him, and Barry is suddenly glad for the just-now-opening gates to help hide his face. Schooling it into an expression of annoyance, Barry chooses not to answer, instead turning off the radio and stepping through the gates, hearing them close behind him until they _click_ shut, and all the men that did the hard work of opening and closing their little Wall of China are standing around him in a circle. "Did you get it?" They ask.

He nods. "I got it."

He chooses to walk through the once-suburban neighborhood, looking at the children drawing with chalk on the sidewalks, looks of wistfulness written on their features as they watch their favorite superhero, now known to them as Mr. Allen, walk past them with a stoic look on his face. The image of a hero. It's a look he's practiced well over the past year.

"Mr. Allen, did you get it?" Asks an older girl, around fifteen. She's watching her little siblings -three of them- draw, like a mama bear protecting her young.

Barry supposes this is exactly what she is.

(Her parents are dead.)

"Yeah, Mireya, I got it." Barry says, and lifts the box in his hands to show her.

Mireya nods firmly, and then turns back to her siblings. "Don't fight," she says. "Look, Nick, share with Barbra, like this..." Her voice fades as Barry gets further away. He can't bear to look at Mireya for too long. It hurts him.

Approaching the biggest house on the block, he sees that Cisco is outside, building something on the front lawn.

She's with him.

Barry can feel his throat closing when he sees her, sitting on a lawn chair, her hair in a high ponytail, her lips and skin pale under the bright sun. Cisco says something that makes her laugh, and Barry suddenly _can't._ He speeds past them, waving very briefly before continuing his trek away from _her._

Because he's too busy running, he doesn't hear her say, "hey, Barry!" With a smile on her face, too bright, too happy, for what she's going through. He doesn't see it fade when he runs inside and slams the door behind him. He doesn't see her look down at her hands before Cisco grabs one and squeezes.

"It's okay." Cisco tells her.

She shakes her head. "It's not."

Sighing heavily, Cisco turns back to his machine, because she's right, _it's not._

Barry doesn't see that.

(He doesn't want to.)

* * *

"Oh, hey!" Felicity says when he shows up next to her and John Diggle, who are in the middle of a game of poker. John is winning,but Barry doesn't tell Felicity this.

"I got it." He says, putting the box on the table.

Felicity peaks inside, and so does John. "That's great," John says. "But why didn't you give it to doc? Didn't you see her? She's right outs-"

"I saw her." Barry interrupts.

Felicity tilts her head, "then why..."

Barry stares at them both for a long while, until Diggle says, "oh." He picks up the box and says, "I'll give it to her. But, Allen?"

Turning, Barry glances at Diggle questioningly. "Yeah?"

"You need to talk to her. You need to talk to Caitlin." With that, John walks out the door, a dramatic exit if Barry's ever seen one.

Turning, Barry sees Felicity standing there with a worried look on her face. "Go be with Queen, Lissie." Barry rubs his eyes tiredly. "Just go."

"This isn't healthy, Barry." Felicity says, ignoring the nickname -she hates being called 'Lissie', but since the Illness it's what more and more people have been calling her. No one wants happiness these days, she guesses- and steps towards him, but he just steps back, flinching. Her hand falls, and she turns away, sighing heavily, before following John, their game of poker forgotten.

And Barry stands there in an empty room, once again alone.

* * *

It was a Wednesday when the world ended. When the Illness spread throughout the world. When it hit Star City, Oliver and his family (Laurel, Sara, Quentin, John, Lyla, the other Sara, Thea, Roy, Ray, Donna, Felicity, Curtis and his husband, Sin and Tommy) came to Central. When it hit Central, Barry and Oliver's families took a few others and came to a suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, built a dome that ran on the power of the sun -God bless Cisco, Felicity, Harrison, Caitlin and Jesse, really- and locked themselves in. There was enough room to grown, but the dome could also expand if the need called for it. There was enough room for crops. The dome was the size of Hawaii's biggest island. They were set.

But people still got sick. They hadn't purified the air. They hadn't listened to Caitlin when she's warned about the water, about how it could be contaminated.

Sara Lance fell first.

She fell first and Laurel fell with her, and it took everyone to keep Quentin from poisoning himself, from following. It took him loving Donna to keep him from dying with his daughters, but some days Barry can still see the loneliness, the shell of an old man clinging to Quentin, and it hurts.

Barry's there, now, at his two friend's graves, reading the names carefully.

 **Sara Lance.  
** **1987 - 2016.  
** **Beloved sister, daughter, defender, and friend.**

 **Dinah Laurel Lance.  
1985 - 2016.  
Beloved friend, wife, daughter, defender, and sister.**

The Illness took them, and it was that tragedy that caused them to clean out the dome, a process that had been slow and dangerous but overall worth it. It caused them to listen to the doctor, to Caitlin (oh, God, _Caitlin),_ and to clean out the water.

But still, people fell.

Tommy Merlyn was next; He had been infected by his wife, Laurel, before she'd died. Then came Sin, and then came Roy, and then came Thea Queen. Oliver had disappeared for days; John and Barry had found him asleep in a ditch, miraculously free of the Illness.

"No rest for the wicked," Oliver had said later, after Caitlin had let him loose. "Not even death."

(Felicity had slapped him.)

Eddie died next. It started out as a regular old cough, but it quickly developed into what Caitlin identified as a problem with his lungs. They searched high and low for the things necessary to treat him, and they found it. Caitlin herself performed the surgery. He survived. Until he didn't. Until he had a stroke in the middle of the night and Iris found him dead next to her in the morning.

Barry lost his father, too. He lost his father again, to the Illness, to a quarantined room and sterilized sheets. "You take care of him," Henry Allen had told Caitlin before he'd died. "Take care of my boy."

(They are married, see; Him and Caitlin.)

She had nodded, grabbed his hand through the thick rubber suit she had been wearing. "With my life."

 _With my life._

* * *

"Barry," Oliver says when he hears the door close. Everyone in the house looks up; There are a lot of them sharing it, because they don't want to sleep in a mostly empty house. This house is huge, anyway; Eight bedrooms, three bathrooms. There's enough room for them. "I heard you found it."

Barry nods, and grabs the plate of food his blood brother has made for him. "Thanks," he mutters, before taking a seat at the kitchen table. Little Sara walks up to him, having finished her food ages ago, and pulls on his pants leg. "What's up, baby girl?" Barry asks, smiling in spite of himself.

She hands him a beat up drawing, one with her and him and Caitlin together, making a radio, he thinks. "For you." She says simply.

"I love it, Sara, thank you." Barry laughs.

"Where's your wife?" Oliver asks as he sits down to eat with him. Oliver watches Barry's eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

"She's not home yet?"

"Nah, bro, we thought she was finally with you," Cisco pipes up from the living room, where he's playing War with Wally. "Damnit," he says when he looks down. "I swear you're cheating, man."

"I'm not," Wally says, holding his hands up in innocence, having finally won the game.

"I know where they are," Jesse enters the conversation, looking up from Iris's hair, which she was braiding; Iris was braiding Felicity's,and Felicity was attempting to braid Lyla's hair; It wasn't working out, as Lyla had short hair and Felicity wasn't exactly good at braiding hair in the first place.

Felicity quirks a brow. "They?"

"Yeah, my dad's with her." Jesse says. "They're at the main house."

Barry nods, done with his food. He throws it away before heading towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Joe asks his son, starting to stand. John pulls him down.

"To get them. It's eleven o'clock." Barry shrugs, and with that, he tumbles out the door.

* * *

Ray Palmer is with them, and so is Professor Stein, sans Jay. They're all muttering to each other, bent over a teeny tiny little serum. The air in the room is cold; Probably on purpose.

Barry stands in the corner of the room, waiting for them to notice them. It is Harry who notices first, followed by Ray. "Oh!" Ray says, pleasantly. "Hi!"

"Hey," Barry says, saluting him. "It's late, guys."

"Is it?" Harry asks, mildly concerned. He checks his watch and huffs, "I suppose it is, yes."

"Go home, Stein," Barry says, and Stein looks up in surprise. "Oliver's got dinner ready, and your wife is already asleep." He glances at the rest of them, "in fact, let's all go home? Everyone wondering where you guys went."

"We're doing important work, Barry," the voice is feminine, and he knows immediately it's Caitlin's. He rubs tiredly at the ring on his finger; He doesn't want to look at her right now. Not now.

"It can wait." Barry says. "Just go," he tells the men. And slowly, they do. Stein first, then Ray, and finally Harry, until it's just the Flash and his wife, in an empty room. "Come on." He moves to usher her out, but she tears away.

"No, Barry. Let me work, okay? Let me figure this out." Caitlin bends down and begins to fiddle with the machine, taking notes, her handwriting steady and neat. It has to be.

"It'll be here tomorrow," Barry tells her, still not meeting her gaze.

Caitlin stills, before looking up at him sharply. "Yes, but _I_ might not me."

Barry staggers back, like he's been slapped, and Caitlin huffs, setting down her notepad, giving him her full attention. "Ready to talk, husband of mine? Or are you still running?" She holds up her left hand, shows him the simple gold band on her finger. "Because, would you look at that, your wife is ready to talk. Your wife _has_ been ready to talk, to spend time with her husband before she dies. Are you?" She's very close to him now, and he can see the veins underneath her pale skin, can hear how heavily she's breathing, so heavy that frost is coming out in puffs as she breathes, a side affect to her sickness.

Tired, Caitlin leans back and collapses against the wall until she's sitting on the floor, back against the cold plaster, knees hugging her chest. "Barry," She finally says, voice tired and small. "I have a month to live."

And, oh, he doesn't think anything's ever hurt him as much as those words.

* * *

He tells her how terrified he is of losing her that night, how terrified he is of being alone in this hell-on-earth, and she tells him she's terrified of leaving him -of leaving everybody. Because here are two souls who have lost everything, clinging to each other for life, clinging to each other on this tiny little earth, still losing, always losing. They can't win. Really. That can't.

And in the darkness, they find each other again, as they always do. "I can't even look at you, God, Caitlin, it hurts to look at you and I don't know why."

"I do," Caitlin murmurs. "I do, and you're such a liar because I know you do, too." She glances at him tiredly. "It hurts because I'm a reminder that you don't always get what you want."

He pulls her close, "all you did was help people, and you ever did was help, and now you're sick and, and, and, and-"

"-dying."

Silence.

"It had to happen sometime, baby," Caitlin whispers to him carefully, wiping away his tears, "baby, listen, the Earth is dead, sweetheart, and I had to join it sometime." She scrunches her nose, _"remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return."_

"What's that from?" Barry asks her, bitter.

"The Bible," Caitlin shrugs.

"It's stupid," Barry brashly decides, but his wife shakes her head, scrambling to her feet.

"No, baby, it's really not." She begins to play with the serum again; It's got a couple more hours until it's finished. "It's a reminder that we're not immortal. Human beings don't live forever. That includes me, honey. _Meta_ means _beyond._ It doesn't mean immortal. I'm gonna be gone soon-"

"-no, don't say that-"

"-I am! I'm going to be gone some day, and you're going to miss me, Barry Allen." Caitlin wags a finger at him playfully, before regaining her solemnity. "I'm gonna be gone some day, but in the meantime, I'm still gonna do my job. I'm a doctor; I save people. And I'll be damned if I don't try and save people til my last breath. I will take care of people with my life. Especially you."

Barry stands, knowing she's referring to his father, a painful reminder in and of itself. _With my life._ He knows full wells he means it.

He looks at the bright blue serum for a long moment before glancing at his wife. "I love you. I'm gonna stay with you and help you with this, and I love you."

Caitlin beams at him, looking a little more vibrant. "I love you too."

When she kisses him, he swears to spend as much time with her as possible. Because the Bible is right: They are dust. But he'll be damned if he doesn't spend this time with her before she returns to the Earth.

She claps her hands when they part. "Mr. Allen, let's get to work."

He bows deeply.

"Sounds good to me, Mrs. Allen."

* * *

Bethany Grean is a blond girl with a strange scar on her forehead and the Illness in her veins. Barry brings her in wearing a quarantine suit, and Caitlin explains what's going to happen with labored breathing, but she does get through it.

"Do it." Bethany tells Caitlin firmly. "Just do it."

So, Caitlin rolls herself over to Bethany (she's in a wheelchair these days; can't walk anymore), takes her needle with the blue serum inside and looks at Barry hopefully before applying it to Bethany, who barely flinches. The world outside of their gated community is a mess, Barry thinks. It's no wonder Bethany doesn't find a needle the size of a carrot worrying.

"You're going to have to be in this room for a little," Caitlin says, "until we see if the serum works."

"It's going to work." Bethany tells Caitlin. "It's gonna work, doc."

Caitlin just smiles.

* * *

It's two days later, at twelve in the morning, that Caitlin shakes Barry awake. "What's wrong, darling?" Barry asks, alarmed.

"Barry," she says, "I'm about to die."

A pit settles into his stomach. Barry clears his throat, "baby, I... I know-"

"-you don't understand," Caitlin says urgently. "Tonight. I'm gonna die tonight." Barry sits up, suddenly dizzy. "Take me to the living room. Please."

He obeys, carrying her to the couch and covering her in mountains of blankets. "Get the others? I want to be with my family. Please." Barry doesn't want to leave her, but Caitlin is insistent, and so he runs to everyone's rooms.

They're downstairs as fast as they can get there. Barry sits next to Caitlin, and Cisco takes her other side when he arrives. Sara curls up next to her daddy after kissing aunt Caitlin goodbye and telling her she loves her very, very much (She doesn't really understand what's going on, but obeys her parents anyway). The house is awake, talking to her for hours, watching her worriedly when she begins to fall asleep.

It is four in the morning when Caitlin says, very loudly, "I hope it worked."

"Bethany was sure it would," Harry says, knowing what Caitlin means.

Caitlin kisses Cisco's cheek suddenly, and then motions for Harry. She kisses him too, and everyone else who approaches her. She kisses Barry on the lips with so much force that Barry thinks she's healed, but then she's breathing hard when they pull away and his heart sinks. Resting her head on her husband's shoulders, she stretches her feet over Cisco's lap and hugs Barry's arm around her. "You're very warm," she tells him. The room laughs.

"Just for you, honey." Barry returns. This feels like the end, for some reason, and he's finding it hard to breath. He looks to Oliver and then Harrison desperately, but they're too busy trying to hold back their tears, too. He's stuck. But even if he could move, Barry really doesn't think he would.

"I love you all," Caitlin says in a stage-whisper.

"We love you too." Joe returns. Iris is crying into his chest.

Caitlin pokes Barry, and he turns to her questioningly. She motions for him to lower his head, and he does so. She whispers in his ear, just for him to hear: "I love you most," she says. "You're the Flash, okay? You're my husband and you're a superhero and you save people and you're the Flash. Don't you ever dare forget."

He says, "okay."

(He means it.)

She relaxes onto his shoulder quietly, snuggling in. _"Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,"_ she says, so quietly that only Barry catches it. Then her mouth closes for the last time, and her breathing grows even, no longer labored, no longer cold. It keeps growing slower and softer.

He wishes it wouldn't.

* * *

(It is five in the morning when a knock comes to their door that Bethany Grean has been healed.

It is five in the morning when Caitlin Snow Allen passes away.)

* * *

The world went to shit, and it went to shit fast.

It starts with a teeny tiny, not important outbreak in Metropolis, one that's handled seamlessly. Then comes a bigger one, one that makes national news, but is still handled. Everyone contaminated is put in quarantine, and Mercury Labs sends some scientists to research on this new disease. It was then that all hell broke loose, that Metropolis fell into disaster. Not one soul was left who hadn't been contaminated. He always says that maybe if there had been some sort of hero there, things could have been better. But there wasn't, and so, people died.

People are still dying.

But people are living these days, too. Because there was a woman, a woman he loved -still loves- that decided she would be a doctor, that decided she would save people, even if she couldn't save herself. She decided that she would do something worthwhile before she died, before her body was just ashes in the wind. And she did.

Barry watches Harry apply the Snow Vaccine to a six-year-old boy who has the Illness, watches as Caitlin's creation -because the vaccine, it had been her idea, it had been her design- saves another life. He glances at the gold band on his ring finger and thinks it's amazing; His wife saved the Earth. His wife dragged the Earth out of death, out of the damn Apocalypse, even at the cost of her own life. And even then, she says she loved him most.

"Barry?" The voice is Iris's, and he turns to greet her with a watery smile. "You gonna go find others?"

He remembers her final words to him: _You're the Flash, okay? You're my husband and you're a superhero and you save people and you're the Flash. Don't you ever dare forget._

He's only a metahuman. He's not immortal; She said that herself. He'll be gone someday, too. But for now, he'll carry her with him. He'll save people, and when they ask about the ring on his finger, about why the cure is called the Snow Vaccine, he'll tell them he fell in love with a woman destined to save the Earth, and save it she did.

"Yeah," he tells Iris, and kisses her forehead as he leaves; She's smiling at him.

 _"I'm gonna go find others."_

 **fin.**


End file.
